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Criminal informants provide important information to the justice system, but they also pose serious risks. We hope this website will help attorneys, journalists, advocates, and families to better understand this vital area of public policy.
Criminal informants are famously unreliable. Jailhouse snitch testimony often leads to wrongful conviction. Over 45 percent of all innocent people exonerated from death sentences were wrongfully convicted based on the testimony of a lying criminal informant. This makes snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in U.S. capital cases.
YOUNG INFORMANTS
Police sometimes use children as young as 14 as informants. These children may be exposed to drugs, violence, and other criminal activities as they work to get information for their handlers. Some have been killed. California and New Jersey have laws restricting the practice: in other states police have discretion to use juvenile informants.
INFORMANT CRIMES
Some informants are serious criminals who receive leniency for their own crimes. The FBI has been known to use murderers as informants. Many jurisdictions permit drug dealers to continue selling drugs in exchange for cooperation. In 2011, the crimes committed by FBI informants alone totaled over 5,600.
URBAN COMMUNITIES PAY THE PRICE
Informants are a staple of drug enforcement. This means that where drug enforcement is heaviest, informant activity is also heaviest. Because drug arrests occur disproportionately in low-income African American neighborhoods, those residents must live with the crime, violence, and distrust that go with criminal informant use.
Many states are rethinking their criminal informant policies. Some have passed laws restricting the use of jailhouse snitch witnesses. Some have created new rules for disclosure and accountability. The U.S. Congress is considering a number of reforms that would improve transparency and safety. In the future, the laws governing criminal informants will likely look very different than they do today.
Snitch: Frontline, PBS (documentary)
Better this World, POV/PBS (documentary)
Snitch (movie) starring Dwayne Johnson
American Violet (movie)
The Informant (movie)
U.S. House Judiciary Hearing on Informant Use (2007)
Student Informants
A series of recent news articles have documented the use of college student informants by campus and local police. A 20-year-old student named Logan at U. Mass Amherst was permitted to continue his drug habit, and keep the secret from his parents, by becoming an informant. He died from a heroin overdose. From the Boston Globe story, "UMass police helped keep student's addiction secret":
Campus police agreed not to seek criminal charges against Logan or notify his parents after he agreed to become a confidential informant, code named "CI-8," something Logan called "an offer I can't refuse" in a text message to a friend. In December 2012, Logan led police to another dealer — who was immediately arrested and suspended — while Logan remained a student in good standing. Police even refunded $700 they had seized from his room, which he immediately used to buy drugs, according to another text to a friend.
At several University of Wisconsin campuses, police acknowledge converting students into informants who have been arrested for drugs. According to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism,
One UW-Whitewater student used as a confidential informant, speaking on condition of anonymity, says he was arrested for selling marijuana and ended up buying ecstasy. Within three hours of his arrest, he says a campus detective searched his phone, identified potential targets and had him sign an agreement. The student, facing felony charges, says he made multiple controlled buys on campus.
These stories follow on the heels of developments at the U.S. Air Force Academy where a student informant program was dismantled after it was made public by the Colorado Springs Gazette. Post here.
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